Ooooooo, that's gotta hurt. Hey, everyone, remember a few months back when Napster said it expected to launch its music download service in the UK by "the end of summer"? And remember those recent rumors that Apple expected to launch the iTunes Music Store over there in June, but no later than October (i.e. "the end of summer"), in hopes of beating Napster to market? Well, June seems to be keeping right on its usual schedule of coming just after May and right before July, but it looks like summer may have come a wee bit early this year; by our calendar it's only May somethingth, and yet, believe it or not, That Darn Cat is already gettin' down and funk-ay across the pond, while the iTMS is still nowhere to be seen. Er, heard. Whatever.

No foolin'! Faithful viewer Jeri was first to alert us to a Reuters article reporting on Napster's suspiciously early UK launch, described as "a major victory over archrival iTunes." Kinda makes you wonder whether Napster told the press "by the end of summer" knowing full well it would be ready far earlier, in order to throw Apple for a nasty loop. Or maybe Napster had planned on an end-of-summer launch, but kicked things into overdrive because of the rumors of the iTMS possibly launching in June. Or possibly Napster has no plan at all, is flailing wildly while jumping up and down and making "deedle deedle" noises, and has simply no clue whatsoever when things will happen, so it just said "by the end of summer" because it seems like a trendy sort of ship-datey thing to say. The world may never know. In any case, Apple may be playing a similar game, as the company just reiterated its official stance that Euro-iTMS will go live "by the end of the year," but now that Napster's moved in over there in Jolly Olde England, if Apple doesn't move more quickly than that, we'll eat our hat.

The edible hat, though-- the beret made out of Fruit Roll-Ups. Just in case. We know better than to bet heavily on Apple ship dates.

By the way, we can't help thinking that Apple might have beat Napster to market if it, too, had confined its scope to the United Kingdom; as we all know, Apple has been trying to wrangle uniform licensing terms for all of Europe, something which Napster apparently didn't even try to undertake, which could possibly bite it in the hinder in the future. And what about pricing? Well, we obviously don't know for sure about Euro-iTMS, but the rumor was that songs would cost 1.29€, or about $1.54. Compare that to Napster's actual UK per-song price of £1.09, which doesn't sound so bad until you do the math and find out that the Brits are expected to shell out the equivalent of $1.93 per song. (They can cut the price to a mere $1.75 by dropping £9.99-- $17.70-- a month on a subscription.) So maybe Apple's slow-going attempts to secure Europe-wide licensing terms will give iTMS customers a price break.

Meanwhile, Reuters reports that "cracking the European market before iTunes is considered crucial for Napster" because "Apple beat Napster by six months in the United States last year and has established a commanding lead." Now, while we certainly don't claim to be able to see into alternate realities or anything (at least, not since the time we ate that moldy guacamole at the back of the fridge that was, for some reason, warm), but Reuters seems to be implying causality that's not necessarily kosher. Sure, the iTMS got a six-month head start-- but let's not forget that all but two weeks of that head start were Mac-only, whereas Napster is a Windows-only service. And even if you subtract off the 13 million songs that the iTMS had sold in its Mac-only days, we hardly think that two extra weeks can fully account for the iTMS outselling Napster by something like a factor of six. Eventually you have to conclude that at least part of the disparity is due to the fact that maybe, just maybe, one of these services is about a kajillion times better than the other. (Figuring out which one is left as an exercise to the reader. Show your work.)

So we'll just have to wait and see what happens when the iTMS finally surfaces in Europe; if Napster isn't quickly overtaken by the iTMS despite Napster's big head start, well, we've still got that hat handy. We just have to think that there's something to that whole "slow and steady wins the race" concept, although instead of "slow and steady" we might have to amend it slightly to "late and non-sucky." But time will tell.

By the way, that moldy guacamole? Turns out that at one point it was actually leftover lasagna. Who knew?